


As the Sparks Fly Upward, My Words Remain Below

by Birdpeople (DeusExMachina)



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: And just generally being kinda morbid and cute, But it's cute you should read it, Just comparing the difference between life and post-life, M/M, Meta, Oh and there's a poem I wrote for Simon?, Reference to past drug use because yeah Simon, that's pretty much it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-12 20:33:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2123703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeusExMachina/pseuds/Birdpeople
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The homemade stuff feels like bile rising in your throat,” Simon admitted. “Just the sensation of it and the prickling. It’s uncomfortable, but at least it doesn't feel like that frigid chemical burn at the back of your nose that you get from the green stuff."</p>
            </blockquote>





	As the Sparks Fly Upward, My Words Remain Below

_Where's your blessed un-feelingness now?_   
_The drug you took for pain?_   
_You used to hide out in your room,_   
_Taking care and blame._   
_You felt nothing gentle and burning,_   
_You had no passions, dreaded yearning,_   
_And yet the numbness broke away_   
_Some part of you no one could say,_   
_In the end it helped you didn't stay._   
_After all, life was a small price to pay._

\---

Simon licked the back of his teeth, grimacing as Kieren put away the little bottle of soupy fluid.

Kieren caught his expression as he sat down next to him. “Does taking the homemade stuff feel different from the standard neurotriptyline?” He asked curiously.

Simon shrugged wryly. “The homemade stuff feels like bile rising in your throat,” he admitted. “Just the sensation of it and the prickling. It’s uncomfortable, but at least it doesn't feel like that frigid chemical burn at the back of your nose that you get from the green stuff.”

Kieren nodded thoughtfully. “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

Kieren waved a hand awkwardly. “Feeling things, but not quite how you did before.”

Simon shrugged. He had a long, pale face, with a wry twist to it. It seemed to Kieren that with a quirk of his thin lips or his brows he could convey a whole set of wry, sarcastic emotions.

“That’s the difference between being alive and being like us. When you’re alive, you get to participate and experience. Once you die, things just happen to you without impacting you.”

“Passivity,” Kieren murmured.

“Exactly.”

Simon was starting to get that look in his eyes- that carefully open look that he got when his words were falling together right for once. Although Kieren knew that those who had followed Simon before his betrayal had considered Simon’s words aspirational, Simon was occasionally frustrated with them himself. He said they didn’t come as clearly as they once had.

When Kieren had said hopefully that it was just the price of swimming against the current to make it back and experience this strange half-life for which they had sacrificed so much, Simon had said that in that case, the price was high.

“Words are all we have now to make a difference. And if they don’t come easily, if we don’t control them, how do we _demonstrate_ the measure of control we want to have elsewhere?” he had remarked once, frustrated.

In all honesty, Kieren could see nothing wrong with Simon’s diction, but then again, he hadn’t known him in life.

He knew that Simon would sometimes keep his mouth shut when his tongue was feeling heavy. And if he was forced to confrontation in those times, he would hold his silence, conveying his distaste through deliberate, meaningful expressions. It drove people even crazier than when Simon spoke, which suited Simon just fine.

Simon kept to himself that he wasn’t totally sure if his loss of clear speech was due to the way he came back.

He didn’t tell Kieren that it could have been the drugs and the manner of his death. He didn’t tell Kieren that it may have been what was done to him after he came back, strapped to that table with men in white coats probing his spine with forceps and a band of pressure around his head.

He kept those things to himself, mouth like a jar of molasses, tongue heavy and awkward.

It was Kieren who made him feel like his words were enough. The way that Kieren shuddered when Simon murmured in his ear made Simon feel like a damn poet.

Kieren didn’t mind sitting in silence, either, sketching lightly with his feet up on the edge of his seat while Simon marshaled his thoughts. He didn’t even mind, in the middle of a sentence, Simon pausing to desperately scour the archives of his mind for the exact right word or, on a bad day, one that was at least close.

On the days when Simon wouldn’t open his mouth for fear of his ineptitude seeping right out, Kieren would teach him that maybe not getting to participate in life was alright. That having things happen to him was more than enough, as Kieren pressed his lips against Simon’s, both of them scraping teeth and biting lips and laughing about it in quiet huffs because they could feel the pressure and the brush of breath across skin and it didn’t even occur to them to miss the warmth.

Yes, things were different now. But if Simon was being honest, things hadn’t been all that great before.

Now he had Kieren. A slip of a kid with awkward joints and cool hands that fit well in Simon’s. And he would give Simon his neurotriptyline and Simon would do the same for him.

And if no words were exchanged, the gentle pressure of the fingers of someone he trusted on the back of his neck was enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a mashup of the biblical "But people are born to trouble, as surely as the sparks fly upward,"  
> and the Shakespearean "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below."
> 
> This whole deal was half-inspired by what Luke Newberry said about Kieren not walking quite right because that's just how he came back. I like to think that coming back leaves you with something permanent like that.
> 
> I've been dying to write something for these two since I watched In the Flesh, but somehow I couldn't marshal my ideas into something cohesive until now. May write more for them later, to be determined. 
> 
> In any case, thanks for reading!! Come see me on tumblr to say hi or for more writing shenanigans.  
> (quasi-birdpeople.tumblr.com)


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